5 customer experience stories you shouldn’t miss

Customer experience is a big world. Headlines, hashtags, bullet points all whoosh through your inbox and Twitter feed like shoppers through the door of a department store on Black Friday and, to be honest, it can be a bit overwhelming. We thought that we might be able to help, just a little, by distilling our favorite stories of the week into one, easily digestible blog post.

If you share even a little bit of our rich interest in customer experience technology, and the rise of Predictive Intelligence, then this is the news summary for you.

How new, improved chatbots have rewritten 50 years of bot history

FastCompany’s ride through the history of chatbots – from the 1966 creation of ELIZA to AOL’s turn of the millennium bot SmarterChild – show us exactly how far AI has traveled. Today’s chatbots don’t want to be our friends; they are focused on improving the customer experience. This may be distant from the mad scientists’ original dream for human-robot conversation, but it’s grabbed the attention of the modern consumer who wants fast, functional assistance on their favorite IM channel. Read the full article here.

How to make discoveries at the speed of light

Predictive Intelligence has hit the big time. The BBC has written an op-ed about how real-time insights have developed to allow businesses to confidently make split-second decisions to improve the customer experience. Denmark’ Roskilde Music Festival, for example, was able to analyze crowd data to determine exactly where they would need more beer, and when. Impressive. The full article is here.

What exactly is Big Data?

Big Data can be a difficult concept for some people to fully understand. So if you feel like there’s a giant question mark hovering over your colleagues’ heads when the term is brought up in meetings, then Forbes has your back. They’ve explained it all with the help of Billund’s most famous residents: the LEGO people. Watch the video here.

Big read: technology in the insurance industry

If you work in the insurance industry, TechCrunch’s latest article about how “insurance brokerage is broken” by the rise of online, and the increasing number of millennial consumers, is a really interesting read. The main takeaway: “insurance companies cannot expect to sell the same way to a cohort with fundamentally different purchasing habits and expectations.” This insight into changing consumer needs is right here.

Bonus: read our report about how the insurance industry is failing its consumers here.

Wish you were there? Welcome to Further Future, AKA the tech world’s Burning Man

This year, we weren’t lucky enough to indulge in spa treatments, fine dining and wellness panels with Silicon Valley’s finest in the Nevada Desert. Along with all the luxury, organizers were looking to answer some big questions. In the words of one of their investors, “what happens post-capitalism? Even post-democracy? What about post-employment, when we have universal basic income?” Read about the festival here.